


What I Wanted...

by Bluewolf458



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-01
Updated: 2014-02-01
Packaged: 2018-01-10 19:20:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1163493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluewolf458/pseuds/Bluewolf458
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What Jim and Blair wanted to do with their lives when they were growing up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What I Wanted...

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Sentinel Thursday's prompt 'professional'

Blair glanced up from the magazine article he was reading. "Jim - when you were a kid, what did you want to do when you grew up?"

Jim blinked. "I don't think there was anything I actually wanted to do. I knew what I didn't want; I didn't want to be a businessman like Dad, but... " He shook his head. "I wasn't really given any chance to think what I _wanted_ to do."

"Not even when you were lying in bed, the light out, not quite ready to go to sleep yet?"

"No. I was too busy being annoyed about things that had happened during the day. Dad's expectations were hard to live up to - no matter how well we did, it was never good enough. Score 100% in a multiple choice test, and he'd nod grudgingly then say it should have been 110%.

"I was in the school football team - not because I wanted to be, and Dad would have been horrified if I'd said I wanted to make a career of it, be a professional football player, but because I was an Ellison I had to be good enough to be in the team. I was athletic enough, but I didn't really enjoy playing football.

"What about you?" Jim saw his chance to change the subject, try for once to get his friend talking about himself. "Did you always want to be an anthropologist?"

Blair actually paused for a moment, clearly thinking. "Well... I did go through a phase of wanting to be a basketball player, but that didn't last long - although I was good, I realized I wasn't likely ever to be tall enough. But by the time I was ten Naomi had taken me to a lot of different countries, mostly the Eastern Asian ones, and the way she visited them, the places she went to... She was interested in the _places_ and the religion; I found I wanted to learn more about how the people who lived in those places... well, lived. Then when I was twelve I found my first actual anthropology book in a library, and wasn't that an eye-opener for me - there was actually a name for what I was wanting to find out. Everything I did after that was geared to learning about anthropology. So I'd say I wanted to be an anthropologist from the time I was ten, before I actually knew properly what anthropology was. Is. I've leaned towards cultural anthropology, but there are so many different branches - even linguistic, strange as that might seem - as well as a link to archaeology, how people used to live, though a lot of that has to be guesswork based on what's found at any given site. A different kind of detective work. Some of the stone age sites - archaeologists used to think they were aligned to catch midsummer sunrise; now they're postulating that it was midwinter that was being celebrated, and when you think about it, that makes sense - the sun is coming back, the days are lengthening... "

"Yes, it does, doesn't it." Jim had never really thought about it, but now that Blair mentioned it, it did make sense. Though it meant that Blair had once again managed to turn things away from himself.

"So what made you decide to go into the army?" Blair asked.

"It was the one place where I was sure Dad couldn't interfere. If I'd tried to get work anywhere else, I wouldn't have put it past him to get in touch with the boss, claim I wasn't old enough to know my own mind, and bribe him to fire me, all in an attempt to make me accept working for Ellison Enterprises.

"He wasn't happy about it, I knew that, but what I didn't know until recently was that he'd somehow managed to follow my career; and by the time my enlistment was up, I'd shown I was successful. I'd made Captain - "

"Just Captain? The way you've spoken about him, I'd have thought he'd have expected you to be a General."

"Eighteen months MIA, remember? Without that he probably would have expected at least one more hike in rank." Jim sighed. "Just the fact that I survived when everyone else in the team died was a sign of success."

"And you came back here, where you grew up, instead of trying another city? Didn't you think your Dad would try to interfere with anything you wanted to do?"

"I wasn't still a teenager. And it occurred to me that he'd probably not find it easy to bribe the police into firing me; as well as knowing that as ex-army I'd get an accelerated course through the Academy. And so... here I am."

"A professional protector of the tribe, even though you didn't realize that was what you were. Cascade was your territory, its people your tribe."

"I didn't think of it that way, but there wasn't anywhere else I wanted to live."

"There's some proof that even when people move to another city, wherever they spent their childhood still means a lot to them."

"What place means a lot to you, Chief?"

Blair grinned. "Cascade," he said. "Remember, I moved around a lot as a child. The family home was in Fort Worth, and I probably spent more time there than anywhere else, but it wasn't in one unbroken chunk. I came here when I was sixteen, still young enough to start thinking of it as 'home' especially by the time I'd been here for five or six years. Oh, I visited Fort Worth from time to time, but... although this is the first long-term home I've had in Cascade, Cascade is 'home' in a way Fort Worth isn't."

Jim smiled. "Yes," he said. "This is your home... and it always will be."


End file.
